I've had a lot of conversations with people lately about how their careers develop, and, comparing notes with people, it's interesting how a lot of that development happens to a person, instead of the result of deliberate action.
What do I mean? A lot of it is just stumbling into something that it turns out they're good at. Certainly I get that, going to school for radio/TV (with a double major in journalism!), only to spend most of my adult life in software. It was never my intention, and the path actually made a lot of sense, but it wasn't really any deliberate choice that got me here.
That said, I have never been consistent about setting goals and pursuing a specific direction since the major shift. When Insurance.com started to meltdown, only eight years ago, I started to think a lot more about my "destiny" in the field. While I loved working with those people, there wasn't a lot of room to be what I think I wanted to be because of the size of the organization, so I probably should have been looking anyway. It was around that time that I realized that leading development efforts, a combination of technical oversight and design, focus on process and execution and a whole lot of solving the "people problems," is what I was best at. Contract work before that put me in those positions, and I thrived. It wasn't what I was hired for at Microsoft, but once there I could certainly see it as a long-term path. Everything since then has built on that.
The SeaWorld Parks gig really made things clear for me, because I realized that I could be confident in my ability. Now I get to bring that to all kinds of clients, and it's satisfying work. As I check in with myself, I still ask, am I letting my career happen to me? Again working at a 120+ company, you start to ask yourself about what it means to "advance," and if that's even an important thing. In my case, I know I'm getting to do the things that I'm really good at, but I'm fortunate also to be in a place where I can make suggestions, be heard, and have additional opportunities to grow. For me that means I'm getting to spend a little time mentoring people who will do the same things I do. It's funny how charged up I get about that, because it fills a hole left by a serious lack of opportunity to coach volleyball.
When you're just starting out, there is definitely a tendency to sketch out a path that leads to a title, a dollar amount or some other measurement of achievement. Then when you get out there, you realize that you have to be flexible, not because you're willing to compromise, but because the variables that life and work throw at you make a specific path silly and impractical. Knowing that is a sign of wisdom, not weakness. Could I see myself occupying some kind of VP or CTO title at some point? In the right kind of organization, sure. Do I want that to happen? I don't know. I have to think about entrepreneurial efforts, too. How's that for making things complicated?
At the end of the day, I can say with confidence that my career hasn't happened to me, and it has been a series of choices. I could not have predicted the outcomes, but at least for eight years I haven't let it be a series of accidents. Some people make that leap early in life, some never make it at all. I think it came for me in a reasonably ideal time.
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